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On this day: March 27

2013: Paul Williams, the journalist and publisher who founded the magazine Crawdaddy!, dies at age 64 at his home in California from complications related to a 1995 bicycle accident. A traumatic brain injury suffered in the accident led to early onset of dementia. Williams created Crawdaddy!, the first American magazine of rock music criticism, in January 1966 on the campus of Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia with first issue consisting of 10 mimeographed pages written entirely by himself.

2006: Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

2006: Zacarias Moussaoui testifies in his federal trial that he and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

2002: Film director Billy Wilder, best known for the movies "Ninotchka," "Double Indemnity," "The Lost Weekend," "Sunset Boulevard," "Stalag 17," "The Seven Year Itch," "Some Like It Hot," "The Apartment" and "Sabrina," dies of pneumonia at the age of 95 in Beverly Hills, California. Wilder won six Oscars, three of them alone for Best Picture-winner "The Apartment" as the film's director, writer and producer, and was nominated another 15 times. He's seen here with his "Sunset Boulevard" star Gloria Swanson around 1950.

2002: British actor Dudley Moore, best known for movies such as "Foul Play," "10," "Arthur" (pictured with co-star Liza Minnelli) and "Micki + Maude," dies from the terminal degenerative brain disorder progressive supranuclear palsy at the age of 66 in Plainfield, New Jersey. Moore, who was also an accomplished jazz pianist and composer, earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in "Arthur."

2002: Actor and comedian Milton Berle, who was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during TV's golden age, dies of colon cancer at the age of 93 in Los Angeles, California. Berle, whose real name was Milton Berlinger, was the first major American television star, hosting NBC's "Texaco Star Theater" comedy-variety show from 1948 to 1955. He started out as a child actor in silent films and moved onto vaudeville, stand-up comedy and radio stardom in the 1920s and 1930s.

1998: The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, becoming the first oral treatment approved to treat erectile dysfunction in the United States. The pill would first be offered for sale in America later that year.

1996: An Israeli court convicts Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, of murder, then sentences the former law student to life in prison. Amir also received another six years for injuring Rabin's bodyguard in the November 4, 1995, shooting and would later be sentenced to an additional eight years for conspiracy to murder. Amir is seen here during a court hearing in 2004.

1995: At the 67th Academy Awards, "Forrest Gump" wins Best Picture, as well as an additional five Oscars, including star Tom Hanks' second consecutive win for Best Actor. Hanks, who had won the year before for his performance in "Philadelphia," became only the second person in Oscar history to accomplish the feat of winning back-to-back awards in the Best Actor category, the first being Spencer Tracy in 1938-39 for "Captains Courageous" and "Boys Town."

1980: Mount St. Helens becomes active, venting steam after 123 years of dormancy. The volcano is most notorious for its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States.

1977: Actress Diana Hyland, best known for her TV work in "Eight is Enough," "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," "Young Doctor Malone" and "Peyton Place," dies of breast cancer at the age of 41 in Los Angeles, California. In "Eight is Enough," Hyland played the wife of Dick Van Patten's character but appeared in only four episodes prior to her death. She had also appeared in numerous guest and supporting roles on TV shows such as "Happy Days," "The Fugitive" and "The Twilight Zone" and had a featured role in the 1966 movie "The Chase," with Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. At the time of her death, she was dating fellow actor John Travolta, who she met while working on "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," for which she won a posthumous Emmy Award.

1977: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583, all of the passengers on a KLM jet and all but 61 on a Pan Am jet. Due to the weather conditions and misunderstandings in communication between the airliners and air traffic controllers, the KLM flight attempted to take off while the Pan Am flight was still on the runway. The incident is still the worst aviation accident in history.

1975: Pop singer Fergie, best known as a member of hip-hop group The Black Eyed Peas, is born Stacy Ann Ferguson in Hacienda Heights, California. She was also a member of the Disney Channel series "Kids Incorporated" and the girl group Wild Orchid.

1975: Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.

1973: At the 45th Academy Awards, Marlon Brando boycotts the Oscars in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to explain why he was not showing up to accept his Best Actor award for "The Godfather." Other highlights of the evening included Liza Minnelli winning Best Actress for her role in "Cabaret," beating out Diana Ross for "Lady Sings the Blues," and Charlie Chaplin earning his first competitive Oscar win for Best Original Score for his 20-year-old film "Limelight," which was eligible due to a technicality. "Cabaret" also set a record for the most Oscars won, at eight, without winning Best Picture, which it lost to "The Godfather."

1972: Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, known for his often mathematically inspired artwork featuring impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, and architecture, dies at the age of 73 in Laren, The Netherlands. Some of his best known works include the lithographs "Relativity," "Drawing Hands" and "Waterfall."

1971: Actor Nathan Fillion, best known for his TV roles in "Firefly" and "Castle," is born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Fillion has also appeared in movies such as "Dracula 2000," "Slither" and "Serenity."

1970: Singer-songwriter and actress Mariah Carey, best known for such No. 1 hits as "Vision of Love," "Someday," "Dreamlover," "Hero," "Fantasy," "One Sweet Day" and "We Belong Together," is born in Huntington, New York. With the release of "Touch My Body" in 2008, Carey gained her 18th No. 1 single in the United States, more than any other solo artist. She has also appeared in the movies "Glitter" and "Precious."

1968: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, who on April 12, 1961, became the first man to travel into space, dies at the age of 34 along with another pilot in the crash of a two-seat jet aircraft while on what was described as a routine training flight. At the age of 27 he rode the Vostok 1 spacecraft into space, orbiting the Earth once in one hour and 29 minutes at a maximum altitude of 187 miles. He never went into space again, instead touring the Soviet Union and training other pilots.

1967: The Who make the U.S. singles chart for the first time, with "I Can't Explain." The song reached No. 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

1964: The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2, strikes south-central Alaska, killing at least 143 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

1963: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, best known for writing and directing movies like "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "Inglorious Basterds" and "Django Unchained," is born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He's won Academy Awards for the scripts to "Pulp Fiction" and "Django Unchained" and has been nominated for Best Director twice.

1958: Nikita Khrushchev becomes the Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1952: Japanese businessman and Toyota Motor Corporation founder Kiichiro Toyoda dies from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 57 in Tokyo, Japan. He formed the company in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyoda Loom Works to create automobiles and served as its president between 1941 and 1950.

1952: The movie musical "Singin' in the Rain," starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor, premieres in New York City. The film was only a modest hit when released and earned only two Oscar nominations, for supporting actress Jean Hagen and its score, but is now frequently described as one of the best musicals ever made and one of the greatest American films.

1939: Oregon wins the first NCAA men's basketball tournament with a 46-33 victory over Ohio State in Evanston, Illinois. Eight teams played a total of eight games in this first national championship tournament. Oklahoma and Villanova were the other teams to make the first Final Four, with Brown, Texas, Utah State and Wake Forest also taking part in the tournament.

1931: Actor David Janssen, best known for playing Dr. Richard Kimble on the 1960s TV show "The Fugitive," is born in Naponee, Nebraska. Janssen, who died of a heart attack at the age of 48 on Feb. 13, 1980, was also known for starring in the TV shows "Richard Diamond, Private Detective" and "Harry O."

1929: Actress Anne Ramsey, best known for her roles in the movies "The Goonies" and "Throw Momma from the Train" (pictured), is born Anne Mobley in Omaha, Nebraska. Ramsey, who started her acting career on Broadway before kicking off her Hollywood career with character parts in TV shows such as "Little House on the Prairie," "Wonder Woman" and "Ironside," earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for her "Throw Momma from the Train" role in 1988. She died of esophageal cancer at age 59 on Aug. 11, 1988.

1915: Mary Mallon (foreground), better known as "Typhoid Mary," the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life. She was presumed to have infected some 51 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook. She had earlier been quarantined between 1907 and 1910, but was released when she promised to abandon working as a cook and to take reasonable steps to prevent transmitting typhoid to others. Although she was given a job as a laundress, she soon changed her name and returned to cooking, leading to her second and final stint in quarantine.

1912: The first cherry blossom trees are planted in Washington, D.C. The trees were a gift from Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki.

1899: Actress Gloria Swanson, best known for her role as faded silent film star Norma Desmond in the 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard," is born in Chicago, Illinois. Swanson was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon. She was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category in 1929 for the drama "Sadie Thompson" and earned two more Best Actress Oscar nominations in her career, in 1930 for "The Trespasser" and in 1951 for "Sunset Boulevard." Swanson died from a heart ailment at age 84 on April 4, 1983.

1890: A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing an estimated 74 to 120 people, injuring at least 200 more and destroying 766 buildings. The F4 tornado was part of an outbreak of more than 20 tornados in the region known as the Mid-Mississippi Valley Tornado Outbreak. The outbreak is still one of the most deadly tornado events in U.S. history.

1866: U.S. President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Bill, which proposed granting citizenship to freed slaves. Within three weeks, Congress had passed a new version of the bill and overridden a second veto, the first time that had been done in American history. The 14th Amendment was later designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the U.S. Constitution.

1863: Henry Royce, the industrialist who joined with Charles Rolls to found Rolls-Royce Ltd. in 1906, is born in Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, England. Within a few years, at the onset of World War I, they turned from automobiles to the production of much-needed reliable engines for aviation. After the war, they continued both as a manufacturer of luxury automobiles and airplane engines.

1860: M. L. Byrn of New York City is issued a patent for an improved corkscrew, described as a "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle." The inventor claimed the design would provide greater strength and durability and could be manufactured at less cost than prior construction methods using a spiral twist of steel wire that gradually tapered from the handle to the point.

1851: The first recorded sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans takes place.

1845: Wilhelm Röntgen, the physicist who would discover X-rays in 1895, earning him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, is born in Lennep, Rhine Province, Germany.

1814: During the War of 1812, U.S. forces under Gen. Andrew Jackson defeat the Red Sticks, a part of the Creek Indian tribe who opposed American expansion, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in central Alabama. This victory, along with that at the Battle of New Orleans, greatly contributed to Jackson's national reputation and his popularity. He was well known when he ran successfully for president in 1828.

1794: The United States government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates. Three years later the first three were welcomed into service as the USS United States, USS Constellation and USS Constitution (pictured).

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